NYC's Double Chicken Please Named The Top Bar In North America

Double Chicken Please values its food as highly as it values its world-class drinks. (At Tasting Table, that's our kind of bar.) Judging by the results of the prestigious North America's 50 Best Bar List announced earlier this week, it looks like other foodies share this sentiment. On May 4, Double Chicken Please was named the top bar in North America, a huge (and well-deserved) decoration for a business that started out as a series of pop-ups held out of a VW minibus in 2017, just six years ago. Last year, Double Chicken Please grabbed the No. 6 spot on the World's 50 Best Bar List, scoring the Disaronno Highest New Entry Award, and this year was also crowned The Best Bar in Northeast USA 2023.

In 2020, GN Chan and Faye Chen evolved their business into a brick-and-mortar joint at 115 Allen Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Before and since, Double Chicken Please has earned global fame for uniquely combining humor and playfulness with expert craft and top-of-the-industry showmanship. Per the establishment's menu, it invents its cocktails "through the process of hacking design." Indeed, nothing short of hacking expertise would be necessary to dream up and execute the bar's famous conceptual drinks: cocktail versions of classic dishes.

At Double Chicken Please, you can have your drink and eat it, too. The cocktails range from sweet to umami and back again, with selections like the French Toast (vodka, brioche, coconut milk, roasted barley, maple syrup, and egg). Is savory more your thing? Try the Japanese Cold Noodle cocktail with coconut, cucumber, pineapple, and sesame oil, or the Cold Pizza with tequila, Parmigiano reggiano, tomato, basil, and burnt toast. Less adventurous sippers, rest assured. Double Chicken Please is also serving up an array of classic (although reimagined) bevys like the Aviation and the Sazerac to please all palates.

While the cocktails are legendary, at Double Chicken Please the food doesn't fall by the wayside. Its fried chicken sandwich is so carefully crafted that it's featured in the bar's title. Rethink everything you know about "bar food" fried chicken sammies; this lineup includes the Hot Honey with buttermilk and Thai basil, and a Salted Egg Yolk version with dried shrimp. In addition to the fried chicken sandwich menu, Double Chicken Please serves up elevated bar snacks like shiitake mushroom poppers, spicy mochi donuts, and chicken wings stuffed with sticky rice and cuttlefish aioli. Don't let the "chicken" in the name fool you, either. This bar's menu is designed with inclusivity in mind, offering a tofu peanut butter sesame oil sandwich for plant-based foodies, as well as a winter melon oolong mocktail for fans of non-alcoholic spirits.

We know what the menu is like at Double Chicken Please. How's the vibe? World's 50 Best describes it as "fast-paced and hip" with a metropolitan clientele to match. Inside, the bar is sectioned into a front room and a backroom, each of which serves up a unique menu. The front room is a classy fusion of an old-fashioned soda shop layout (for the on-tap cocktails) and an industrial design aesthetic. To continue the industrial feel, the on-tap cocktails don't have names. They're each designated by a number (as in, "I'll have the #4") and a list of their ingredients, and run for about $15 (mid-low pricing by NYC cocktail bar standards). The back room looks like the sexy upscale 1970s watering hole of your wildest vintage dreams. Guests can sip their Red Eye Gravy cocktails in a wood-paneled, low-lit pad adorned with a tasteful smattering of avant-garde art pieces.

In recent years, NYC's cocktail scene has become a formidable beast thanks to fashionable, front-of-the-pack bars like Double Chicken Please. The 2022 winner of North America's 50 Best Bar List was fellow Manhattan cocktail institution Attaboy. This year, the city is once again home to the winner, and also clinched two out of the top three spots with Katana Kitten coming in third. Cocktail fans are sure to be watching eagerly to see what Double Chicken Please (and New York City's bar scene at large) dare to offer next.